


Like a Goddamn Near Sociopath

by JustLikeAPapercut



Category: Succession (TV 2018)
Genre: Bad language abounds, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Trauma, Unreliable Narrator, oh I'm kidding they're a total clusterfuck, slightly dented people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:02:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25585609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustLikeAPapercut/pseuds/JustLikeAPapercut
Summary: But fuck, if he broke his phone at the same time that he broke his head, then whatever he pulled was no doubt idiotic and maybe he doesn’t want to talk to Gerri right now.
Relationships: Gerri Kellman/Roman "Romulus" Roy
Comments: 58
Kudos: 118





	1. Chapter 1

* * *

_you remember too much,  
my mother said to me recently._

\- Anne Carson, "The Glass Essay"

* * *

He doesn’t remember much about the first few days. 

He sleeps most of the time, wakes up a few times to nurses or doctors coming in. But even then he’s barely conscious and doesn’t recall their questions later, whether they were even talking to him or to someone else in the room. 

He remembers hearing Shiv’s voice, later. He has a distinct memory of her saying, “Absolutely fucking not,” to someone. But maybe it isn’t a memory? Maybe he just dreamed that. 

Maybe he doesn’t remember anything from those first few days, not even the smell of Gerri’s perfume. 

But one morning he wakes up in a hospital bed to see Kendall sitting beside him, looking like shit with a day’s worth of stubble. Like maybe he finished off a night of coke with some ketamine landing gear and then fucked right off to sit here, next to him. 

“Hey,” Kendall says. He doesn’t sound right, is looking at Roman like he’s surprised. Like maybe he’s so high he forgot where he was. 

Christ, Ken. What a fucking loser.

“Is that coffee?” Roman croaks, his throat thick with something. Tries nodding his head to the styrofoam cup Kendall’s holding, but _fuck_ that makes his head hurt. It feels like that time his college girlfriend threw a book at his head because she walked in on him jerking off onto her roommate’s blouse. But like, it hurts a million times worse. 

He winces, moving his hand to his head, and only then does he notice the IV wires and the monitors, and what the fuck, why is he even here? Does he even know? 

He doesn’t think he knows why he’s here.

“I don’t - I don’t know if you can have coffee yet,” Kendall manages, and he looks worse than petrified dog shit. “Let me ask, okay?” 

“Sure, okay,” Roman says. “Whatever.” 

Kendall stands up from his chair, but stops at Roman’s bed. Touches Roman’s arm with his clammy fucking hand (do downers give him the sweats? Roman can’t remember). Gives him a weird, creepy ass smile and says, “I’m really glad to hear your voice, dude.” 

“Uh okay,” Roman says. Yeah, Ken is definitely some kind of strung out. “Sure. Great to hear wind come out of your mouth hole, too. Coffee?” 

“Yeah,” Kendall says. “Right. Okay.” 

Roman doesn’t know how long Ken’s gone, whether he gets lost or gets kicked out for trying to steal pills or what, but the next thing Roman knows, he’s waking up again. 

“Hey,” Shiv says before he’s even had a chance to get his bearings. 

Where did his brother go? And where the fuck is that coffee? 

“Is it creepy weird smile day and no one told me?” he says, pulling at his arms. Annoyed by all the wires and cords around him. Fuck, he hope there’s nothing running up his dick, but he’s too scared to look. “I’m sure I have a hat box full of them at home, but I reserve the right to borrow one from your dickswab husband.”

“Fuck off,” Shiv says, but it’s brittle, comes out with something that’s too mangled to be a laugh and too long to be a sob, and okay, now Roman is really starting to freak out. 

“Where did that traitorous cum dump of a brother go?” He fucks around with the bedsheet and yeah, there’s definitely a line running down below his waist, and fuck. Fuck, does he even have a dick anymore? Why the fuck is everyone acting like they just landed from bizzaro land with their thin, Pierce-esque smiles? “That loser was supposed to be getting me coffee. Useless fucking meth head.” 

“Ken left a few hours ago,” Shiv says, and Roman stares at her because that can’t be right. “But he’ll be back later, I think.” 

“He was just here,” Roman says. Looks at her like she’s an idiot. 

“You asked him to get you coffee when you first woke up, but that was about ten hours ago.” She says it like she’s trying to be gentle. Like the way she talks to Wambsgans’ idiot dog when he has to wear that ridiculous thunder jacket, because of course Wambsgans got a twenty-thousand-dollar dog that’s descended from the Queen herself or some shit, but is still too inbred and stupid to know not to piss all over the floor at the first sound of rain. 

Sure, Tom is equally stupid and spineless, but at least Shiv acquired his dead weight for free.

“He was just here,” Roman repeats, grounding the words out now. 

“No,” Shiv says. Is still using her stupid dog voice on him, but now it looks like she’s about to cry. “That was this morning, Rome. It’s just that you’re still sleeping a lot and your memory… your memory isn’t there yet.” 

He looks at his sister now and he can see it. How’s she a fucking polaroid of herself from when their father was in the hospital. After the stroke. Better hair. Less hippy dippy bullshit granola clothes. But her face. It’s the same. 

She’s scared. 

“What happened to me?” He’s trying not to sound panicked, but he hears the way his voice pitches up, and the pressure behind his eyes throbs. His whole head just pulses in pain and when he reaches up behind his head, there’s bandages there. 

“Careful,” Shiv flies out of her chair. Grabs his arm before he can pull at anything. Which is just a bitch move when he’s stuck in this bed and he has buzz saw cutting through his head right now, and oh God, oh God, oh God, what’s going on? 

“What happened to me?” He’s begging now. Sounds like a pathetic, snot nosed kid. The kind of tone that would send his father into a blind rage and would make his mother roll her eyes, pouring herself a martini and muttering something about dramatics. 

“You had a cranial fracture,” she says, and she’s holding both of his hands in hers now, restraining him maybe. “But the surgery went really well and they think you’ll be fine.” 

“I don’t feel fine,” he manages. Feels angry and scared. 

Where’s Ken? Where’s his dad? He thinks he wants his father. Wants Logan to tell him that it’s nothing and he’ll be fine, so stop being such a sniveling idiot about a bumped head. 

“You had a concussion,” Shiv breathes out. And Roman can see that she really looks like shit. Has maybe cried her eye makeup off or something, because her skin is blotchy and red. “It might take a little while, but everything will be fine.” 

He wants to know what happened, but he also doesn’t. Doesn’t want to know that he got too drunk and jackknifed into the pavement in front of some trendy restaurant, Tabitha and her skinny, boring friends standing around him while he bled out. 

God, he hopes Gerri didn’t witness whatever the fuck he did. He doesn’t really pray anymore, doesn’t believe in a God or anything besides this pointless parade of boring shit and jerking off, but he still sends that hope up, into the universe now. 

_Please let Gerri have missed whatever ridiculous bullshit he pulled that ended with him literally cracking his head open._

“Is Gerri here?” he asks. 

“No, and _fuck_ Gerri,” Shiv says, and her hands shake as she lifts them up to push her hair out of her face. 

“Um, okay,” Roman says. Wonders what’s happened while he’s been out in twilight, brain damaged land. He thinks they’re still dealing with the bullshit Ken pulled, but he can’t remember. That could have been last week or last year, for all he knows. 

“They said you can eat,” Shiv blurts. “Do you want to eat? Are you hungry?’

“Yeah,” he says, even though food sounds horrible. 

Shoveling hospital slop in his mouth will save him from having to talk, which will save him from saying shit to Shiv while he’s too brain damaged to stop himself and which, undoubtedly, she’ll pull out to use against him once she’s no longer doing this weird Kathy Bates bullshit _Misery_ dance. 

None of the food tastes like anything, and that could be him or it could be the food, but he still manages some slow bites while Shiv talks to fill the silence. A steady stream of words that Roman finds boring and stupid, but maybe, maybe better than the silence of his head. 

“Con came by yesterday,” Shiv rolls her eyes. “Be grateful you didn’t wake up when he was around.”

“I’m sorry to crush his hopes of the inheritance being split three ways rather than four,” Roman says. “Not that we have definitive proof that the human ameba can even do fractions.” 

“Can you?” Shiv snorts. Flips on the TV that’s on the far side of the room. 

“Can you,” Roman parrots, and Shiv flips him off with the hand that’s not holding the remote. “Hey, go back,” he says, when she zips past all the news stations. But she ignores him, settling on some stupid procedural with a dumb blond in a pink dress and a hick accent. “I don’t want to watch your menopausal menses bullshit, change it back to news.” 

“Sorry, lobotomized people don’t get a vote.” But there’s no venom there and Roman wonders now what she’s keeping him. Maybe the stock is taking a shit again? 

Dad’s gone, ousted months ago. He remembers that now. Remembers sitting in cars with Gerri, ferried back and forth to meetings for weeks on end. Dinners in her office, working late. Trying to cover the company’s ass but mostly their own, no matter who they had to sacrifice to stay safe. To keep Gerri safe, really. 

Fuck, he should text Gerri. Find out what’s going on. 

“Where are you fuck nuggets hiding my phone?” He looks around at the tables on either side of his bed, but there’s nothing there but butt-ass ugly flowers and some of Shiv’s discarded girly crap. 

“Put my purse down,” she sighs. “Your phone isn’t in there.” 

“Where is it?” he pushes. Throws a lipstick at her when she doesn’t answer, still staring at the television like he’s fucking Casper the head-bashed ghost and she can’t fucking hear him. 

“Hey!” 

“Siobhan, I want my goddamn phone!” 

“It’s gone,” she tells him. “It broke when you got hurt. And seeing as how unconscious people don’t have a need for Grindr, we didn’t think to replace it.” 

“Fuck you.”

He really wants to talk to Gerri now. But fuck, if he broke his phone at the same time that he broke his head, then whatever he pulled was no doubt idiotic and maybe he doesn’t want to talk to Gerri right now. Doesn’t need confirmation of her irritation that she’s pulling double duty to save their asses while he was like, out in the Hamptons, doing drunken swine dives into four-foot deep pools with his phone apparently in his pocket. 

The show Shiv has on is stupid and boring, so of course Roman falls asleep to it. He wakes up sometime in the night because the lights are low, the curtains pulled. No company other than the beeping of machines and dull throb at the base of his neck. 

He isn’t awake for long. Maybe a few minutes. But he remembers now that Tabitha moved out a few weeks ago. Sent him an annoyed email and took all of her stuff while he was working late at Gerri’s apartment. Recommended a good therapist in her email, too, which, fuck her very much. The mysteries of Roman Roy have confounded many a therapist already and no way whatever two-dollar shrink her lame, boho artist friends go to can do any better. 

He sent her a text saying as much, but never got a response. Bitch. 

He probably can’t go back to his own place, not now that he lives alone. What’s he supposed to do, ask one of his siblings to play nurse, make sure he eats his peas and doesn’t drown in the bathtub? 

He’d rather strangle himself with his IV line.

He doesn’t get very far down this particular line of thought before he falls asleep. Dreams about being drunk at a pool party. Gerri in a gown that makes her eyes shine so blue, telling him not to be an idiot before he dives headfirst into the water. 

. . . 


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

_I need to breathe in and then breathe out  
_ _punch through the window, I'm bleeding now_

\- Nasty Cherry, "Win"

* * *

Roman wakes up to Kendall and Shiv arguing about something, though what, he can’t really tell. He’s too distracted by how much his head hurts, how he feels like he’s about to puke his guts out, right into his gown covered lap. 

“Shut up,” he tells them. Or tries to, but it only comes out as a mumble, an unintelligible sound that Connor would slap on a bumper sticker or a youtube video, fucking beaming at his own brilliance. 

Apparently there’s a nurse in the room and she’s, like, Nostradamus with vomit spidey senses, because she shoves something under his face that catches his puke while his siblings make scared noises and are generally useless. 

“Is he okay?” Kendall asks, like an idiot. 

“That’s normal, right?” Shiv asks at the same time. “The specialist said there’d be some nausea?” 

Roman doesn’t know which of his siblings he hates more right now, but he really needs everyone to shut up, including the nurse who’s now explaining that it’s all normal and they shouldn’t be worried. 

Fuck that, and fuck her, because he doesn’t normally greet the day by puking all over himself, though Christ knows there are days when he would like to - metaphorically speaking. 

“You okay, bro?” Kendall asks him, and Roman notices that Kendall shaved or else didn’t crawl out of a bag of powder today. 

“Fucking fantastic,” Roman mutters. “Just hand me a fucking bib and and I’ll run the Boston marathon. Is bib number sixty-nine taken? I demand to buy it from whichever pervert got it.” 

Shiv says something shitty that Roman can’t quite make out, but she’s still wearing the same expression as yesterday. Closed off and scared, rather than closed off and bitchy. 

Would they even tell him if he was going to die? Kendall might, now that he’s gone all vertebrate on them, but Roman isn’t so sure about Shiv. She’d probably give him the old _Of Mice and Men_ , if anything at all. 

“Can you drink some water?” Kendall asks him, like Roman is a preschooler. One of the kids Ken donated his genetic material to but doesn’t know how to be around or even fucking hug. 

“No,” Roman says. He’s got the spins now, so he closes his eyes. Wants to go back to sleep and wake up to find this was all just some nightmare, a bad batch of molly. Blink his eyes and click his ruby loafers together three times. Wake up with an unbusted head and no wires coming out of his dick. “I need to text Gerri,” he says, when he’s sure he’s not going to throw up again. “I want a phone.” 

“You can’t stare at any screens for a while,” Kendall tells him. “The blue light is bad for you right now. But Gerri’s fine. Doesn’t have a scratch on her.” 

“She better be fucking grateful,” Shiv says. At which point Roman really loses the thread of the conversation as she and Ken start arguing again. 

He wants them to tell them to get the nurse or the fucking pan or whatever, but he can’t seem to produce words and they’re too busy arguing, shouting words his mind can’t track because of the blinding pain and spinning room and the fact that his guts have apparently decided to migrate into his throat. 

He throws up all over himself this time, no one to stop it. He hears Ken swear and Shiv yell for someone, but Roman just closes his eyes, hangs his head back. 

When he’s sure he can open his mouth without bile coming out, he grounds out the words, “get out.” 

“Roman,” Shiv begins to argue.

“ _Get. Out._ ” he says. Can’t manage to shout like he wants to but puts all his hatred behind the words. He hears the nurse and someone else ushering them out not long after that, Shiv protesting the whole time. 

Someone comes in and cleans up, and then a doctor comes in and asks him a few questions. Looks at something on a clipboard, probably just for show. Remind everyone she went to med school or whatever. 

“I wanted to get you up and around today, but I think we’ll hold off on that until tomorrow,” she says. 

“Can’t wait,” Roman says. 

It occurs to him, once she’s gone, that he could have asked her what the hell happened to him. He’s pretty sure she can’t legally lie to him. But then again, the phrase ‘can’t legally’ is only a stand in for ‘need more money to’ and he doesn’t know if his siblings have bought her off yet. Probably. All that medical debt and bullshit. How much can medical school even be? Only a couple million at most, right? Unless you suck and you have to pay for grades, but even then. His dad paid maybe a hundred grand, tops, for all the bullshit accolades Roman got in school. 

He wonders here if his dad’s even been by to see him Doubtful, since Logan’s been hiding out somewhere, outside the city, and even then, Roman can’t think of a single time his dad showed up at the hospital for any of them. Maybe Kendall’s first OD. But no, Roman thinks he still sent someone else. Probably Gerri. 

Fuck, he really needs a phone or something. 

. . .

He tells his doctors to keep his family away from him. Threatens to sue, even though he has no way to contact a lawyer, and Kendall and Shiv will probably threaten to sue, too. But fuck that. 

It gets lonely, after the first day. And the physical therapy is humiliating. Someone walking him like a dog around the neurology unit, his legs refusing to support his own fucking weight. He gets the spins and then a headache, but doesn’t throw up, so he calls that a win. 

Three days after he kicks everyone out, he bribes a janitor to get him a phone. Logan was always bitching about minimum wage increases, but Roman can’t remember how much minimum wage even is now. Thankfully his wallet is one of the few things he has to his name and he gives the guy a wad of bills to go buy him some sweet, sweet internet. 

Maybe he should have asked for an iPad instead, he has trouble seeing well enough to even log into his email and enter all his passwords to shit. There are five million emails, but fuck that noise. He’s going to milk this might-be-dying thing as an excuse to not talk to any of them. Plus it hurts to squint and he can’t actually read much.

He recalls Kendall saying something about Gerri being fine, which makes him freeze for a moment. He tries to rewind what Shiv was saying right before he threw up. He doesn't really want to google his name because he’s trying to live for a little while longer in this pause before his abject public humiliation becomes known to him. But maybe he wasn’t a drunken shithead at all, maybe he was in a car accident or something dignified and he wasn’t wearing his seatbelt. Gerri always wears her seatbelt though, so maybe that’s what Kendall meant. 

Or maybe his brother is just a junky in a Leonard Logsdail suit. 

He pecks out an email to Gerri from his work account. He can’t see well enough to proofread it. Dashes off something lurid and puerile and kind of halfway asking if she’s alright. He refreshes his inbox fifteen times in the first two minutes, but there’s nothing but work shit and he groans, wanting to throw something or chug a beer or maybe go screaming naked down the hallway. 

He doesn’t know if that physical therapist will consent to walk him while he’s stark raving naked, but maybe it’s like being an escort and weird shit is just part of the job. He’s heard anyway. He’s never had cause to pay an actual prostitute for sex, only trainers and massage therapists and, that one time, an interior decorator. Gerri’s ratfink detective didn’t even find out about most of that. Talk about shitty oppo research. Maybe he’ll drop that one day when he’s bored and trying to get her attention. Then again, he hasn’t been bored at work in months. 

He debates downloading a game, but he doesn’t think he’ll be able to play anything with his headache. He stalls for a while, hiding the phone when a nurse comes in, but then she leaves and Roman pulls up the browser. Goes to TMZ and searches his own name, heart in his throat. Reads the title of the first blurb, _Roman Roy assaulted by protestors._

He pauses and reads that again. Protestors? Like those brainless pinko Antifa pussy fucks? No fucking way. 

There’s an article but he can’t see to read it, and the text won’t fucking enlarge so he just stabs his finger at the video instead. 

The vid was obviously shot from a phone, a shitty one because he can’t make out much. The person is shooting over a crowd, and everyone starts angrily shouting and chanting when a vehicle pulls up. It’s chaotic and the audio is crap, but he thinks he hears his own voice. Like maybe he even shouts something? And then there’s a surge of people and more shouts, but this time they’re yelling at someone to stop.

Someone screams and there’s a brief part in the crowd and he can see himself on the ground, people around him. His security apparently as useless as everything else in his life because there he is, fucking gay bashed on the ground and no one even protected him. Well, not like, _gay_ bashed. But fucking bashed, okay?

There’s another clip. This one maybe a little better, a lot closer, but he doesn’t want to see it. He doesn’t remember that day or that car ride, and he certainly doesn’t remember cowering in front of an angry crowd and then bleeding out, for the whole internet to see. 

He shoves the phone under his pillow and doesn’t check it again. Just asks for something to help him sleep and slips mercifully into unconsciousness. 

. . . 

He wakes up in the middle of a dream about Gerri. He doesn’t know what it’s about, but he can hear her voice and smell her perfume, and he wants to wrap himself up in it, just cocoon himself inside the way she says his name and how she smelled in Japan, and at Argestes, and that one time she had to show up at his military school because of a prank he organized involving two hundred condoms blown up like balloons. 

But then he opens his eyes and he isn’t dreaming. She’s just sitting there, staring at him, a frown creasing her forehead. 

“Hey,” he says. Doesn’t sit up or anything because he still thinks she might not be real. That he’ll wake up and he’ll be alone. 

“You look like shit,” Gerri says, and he perks up here. She doesn’t sound like a dream.

He makes a mumbling sound. Things are sometimes jumbled when he first wakes up, his brain a lawn mower that won’t start on the first pull. His dad made him mow the lawn in the old Hamptons house one time as a punishment and he can’t remember much about it, only his mother tsking that his newly calloused hands and dirty fingernails made him look like a commoner. 

“Hey,” he says again. This time a little clearer. 

“Oh,” she says. “You’re even more repetitive now. How delightful.”

It’s the first thing that’s made him feel better since he woke up in the hospital, and he tries to string together a joke that riffs on that, but the gears in his mind just make a grinding sound. Stupid horse tranqs they gave him last night, probably. 

“No, don’t get up,” she says, when he tries to sit up. She sounds urgent, but not the way she talks to her staff when they’re behind schedule and none of them have slept more than four hours in a week. 

“I take it you missed me,” he manages. Which is just lame, but he’s medicated and not working at his typical, stellar level of wit and verbal acuity. 

“How are you feeling?” she asks, ignoring him. Moves to the chair that’s closest to him. 

“Oh, great,” he lies. “Nothing but drugs and pussy in here.”

“I heard you kicked your family out,” she says. And her face is a completely impassive wall of nothing, not even judgment. He hasn’t seen this expression in private for a while. Or if he has, he doesn’t remember. 

“Their voices literally made me vom,” he sighs. “Couldn’t act like a couple of normos even in a hospital. So yeah, I kicked them the hell out so I could sleep.”

She doesn’t say anything to this, only watches him, and he wonders here if she had a front row ticket to him getting beat up by some powder puff commie power hippies that don’t believe in showers.

Probably. That’s probably what Kendall meant when he said she was fine and anyway, she can’t be all that surprised that he’s incapable of defending himself. 

“I have some things for you to sign,” she tells him after a long pause. “If you’re up to it.”

He thinks about fumbling his way through it, pretending to read everything and then confidently signing his name, but he knows we won’t be able to manage it.

“I can’t really, um… it’s still kinda hard for me to read things,” he admits. 

He expects a joke about here about how he’s always been an illiterate walking dick joke and this doesn’t actually change anything, but instead she reaches into her bag and pulls out a stack of papers. Says, “I’ll just read anything pertinent out loud and then you can sign, alright?” 

The papers could say anything. He could be signing away his inheritance as Gerri recites the world’s most boring piece of fiction about press statements and new PR lines for cruises. But he trusts Gerri not to fuck him over, has trusted her long before his dad got thrown overboard after that cruise from hell, and anyway it’s not like he could ever stop her if she wanted to take him out. She could knife him in five seconds and not even break her stride.

She’s the name on the piece of paper now and he’s only the COO. 

“Anything else?” he asks, hoping there’s more in her bag. She’s been reading to him off and on for what feels like a long time, and he doesn’t want it to end. He missed out, not ordering her to read every contract to him when she was still head legal counsel. 

“That’s it,” she says. Reaches her hand over to push some hair out of his face, then quickly pulls her hand away. “You feel okay?”

Roman only shrugs. His head hurts a little but he feels better with her being here, him listening to her mouth rattle out hard consonants in a hushed voice he barely recognizes. No rancor in it, no promise to berate him until he comes.

“I should get back,” she says. Stands up and goes to reach for the coat she’s apparently draped by his bed.

“You’re okay, right?” he blurts, grabbing her wrist. Watches her face as her whole body freezes for a moment, like when his dad would go on his tirades and anyone who moved might be shotgunned like deer in a wide open meadow. 

“I’m fine,” she says, and something passes over her face. Discomfort maybe, or some type of sadness. Roman’s never been good at reading those things and Gerri’s so fucking hard to read anyway. But he’d give up a lot of his money to know what she’s thinking as she stares down at him right now. “Roman, I’m just fine. You’re the one who got hurt.” 

He wants her to stay, to not leave him here all alone, but he doesn’t want to seem like a loser about it and he knows how busy she is, even before her COO got himself all kinds of royally concussed. 

“Don’t be a stranger,” he says, because apparently he’s brain damaged enough to sound like one of Wambsgans’ pasty Midwestern relatives. Some lame dairy farmer. 

Gerri opens her mouth to stay something, probably call him a tool or something, but instead she leans down and kisses his forehead. Whispers, “don’t give the nurses too much trouble.” 

She leaves before he can say anything else, and after that it’s just him in a mostly silent room. 

But at least now he has confirmation that the blood flow to his dick is completely unimpeded. So that's pretty cool.

. . . 

It’s raining the day he gets released. They insist on him leaving in a fucking wheelchair, which is stupid, completely asinine, and he hops out of it the second they hit the ground floor. No way he’s getting wheeled out of this bitch like some Cialis popping, triple bypass peas eater. 

He’s already called for a car, but when he gets outside, Kendall is waiting for him beside a black SUV. 

“Sorry but when my brain unscrambled, I remembered that I hate you,” Roman tells him. It’s not really true, though he’s remembered to be mad, ish. Their dad was totally going to send Ken to prison, where he’d end up someone’s wife in like ten minutes tops, so fair’s fair. But it still sucks and Roman knows he’s going back to work in a place that’s quietly engulfed in flames. Gerri stoically putting out one fire after the next as he just tap dances around her, swinging his dick.

“Hate me inside the car,” Kendall says, and opens the door for him. 

They go to Roman’s place, and when they walk in everything smells like it’s been recently cleaned. The chemical odor makes his head hurt a little. 

“Are you hungry?” Kendall asks. Flops down on the couch like they’re best buds and this is some kind of middle school sleepover. 

“What do I have to do to make you go away?” Roman glares.Leans against his kitchen counter.

“You shouldn’t be alone the first few days,” Kendal says.“So take your pick, me or Shiv.”

“Hmm maybe I can just brain myself with a baseball bat and duck out of this whole Sophie’s choice.” 

“I’ll make sure to tell you if there’s anyone else who needs a human shield, but barring that, and anymore concussions, you’re stuck with me.”

The thing is, it’s not horrible having Ken around. He seems not obviously high, even if he makes confusing jokes, and there’s nothing left to jockey over in terms of their dad. The last day Roman was in the hospital, he thought about Logan nailing him in the mouth at Argestes. Remembered the pain and the embarrassment, but also Ken’s voice ringing out, saying something like, “don’t you fucking touch him.” 

Ken could be worse. He could be Connor. Or Shiv. 

They order a massive pyramid of sushi from Roman’s favorite restaurant, and it’s good but not amazing, so maybe he’s still off. 

“This place looks bleak,” Ken says, looking around at the barren apartment. 

Roman doesn’t even know why he asked Tabitha to move in. She was fine. It was all… fine. But he’s always hated being crowded, and he doesn’t know why he created a situation in which he’d feel like a sardine, like fucking emotional kipper snack who has to make conversation first thing in the morning, before he even has a cup of coffee poured down his throat.

“Bleak like your life,” Roman retorts, but Kendall only smirks at him. Makes a walrus face with his chopsticks. 

The guest room is pretty much the only room that’s still fully furnished, and Roman throws open the door. Gestures into the darkened space with a grand flourish. 

Kendall sets his laptop bag down and opens the curtains. Goes to hang up his garment bag because he’s always been pretty _American Psycho_ about his clothes.

“No cocaine stains on the bed please,” Roman says. “And I have a rape whistle, so don’t try anything pervy tonight.”

“I’m sober right now,” Ken says. Doesn’t sound defensive like the five million other times Roman’s heard that line. “Since, uh, the day after you went in the hospital.”

“Yeah?” Roman says. Doesn’t really believe him, but he’s learned to save his jokes for when Ken is off his balls high and thus more easily tormented. 

“When Shiv called me about you, I was with Naomi. We were partying and I couldn’t…” He hangs up a suit jacket in the closet. Runs his hand over a wrinkle Roman can’t even see. “She had to repeat what she was saying a bunch of times, and then I couldn’t get to the hospital because I was too messed up to call the right car service.”

“You’re saying my brain being put in a blender scared you straight?” Roman’s incredulous, but he also knows most of Ken’s tells by now. His brother’s either gotten better at blowing bullshit bubbles or he’s actually sober right now. 

“One week at a time, right?” Ken says. 

Roman has this weird, sick urge to like hug him or something, but he thinks that’s only the concussion talking. They don’t do that, none of the Roys really do that, and he has no interest in starting now. 

Roman’s exhausted after this, but it’s only two o’clock in the afternoon, so he sits down to his laptop to do some work. Gerri’s assistant’s sent him a whole pile of shit to look through, including a deal that fell through last month but that Roman thinks might still be salvaged. Nothing a few rim jobs can’t smooth over. 

He hasn’t checked his phone since he got home, so he glances at it now. He already had his service transferred over, and there are dozens of texts filling up the screen now. He pauses, looking for Gerri’s name, but there’s nothing from her and so he aimlessly scrolls through the others. Stops on a message from a girl he used to kind of, sort of fuck, back in his MBA program. There’s a video attached and a message that says, _who knew you could be a hero._

There’s no way to read that without sarcasm. But he’s feeling pretty masochistic after spending time with Ken in his half empty apartment, so he clicks on the video anyway. 

It’s another shitty cell phone video of the protest, but this one’s shot from a different angle. Maybe he’ll actually see the faces of the assholes who put him in the hospital, though probably not. 

He watches anyway. Sees the SUV he normally takes around town pull up, and then he and Gerri get out, along with the security detail. He remembers now that shit’s been extra crazy lately. Way more death threats than usual. He’s just thinking about whether the brainbashers were even antifa or someone else, blending into the crowd, all perp like, when he sees a handful of people hop over the barricade. Only, Roman clearly sees himself being surrounded by his security, one of them grabbing his arm. But where’s Gerri? Where the fuck is Gerri, and why is every single security guard flocking around him when she’s the name on the paper - a five foot-two, sixty-year old woman with arthritis that she won’t admit to in her right knee, because she’s a lying viper of a bitch. 

But then something happens, he sees himself shout and bolt free of his security, and then he’s standing where the phone camera can’t see him. But he sees Gerri now. Sees her get shoved clear by someone, into the hulking arms of a security guard who carts her off like Tarzan. 

But wait, who shoved her clear to begin with? 

Oh _fuck_ , it was him. He just went all Batman and swooped in to save her from that angry mob like some kind of Olympic hero ninja. 

He thinks about texting Gerri something smartass, but then the video changes and he hears the angry shouts turned to panicked screaming, and his blood goes cold. Someone off camera says, “oh my god” and he only sees footage of pavement and shoes for the next few seconds. But when the camera pans up, he sees himself. People crouched around him while he lies crumpled in a pool of his own blood. 

When Ken comes in to find him, he’s on the floor. He can’t catch his breath and it feels like he’s going to die. Like maybe he never got off that pavement and he’s still lying there. 

Still somewhere else, just bleeding out. 

. . . 


	3. Chapter 3

* * *

_I've got to cover, I can't pretend_   
_that I'm anything more to you now_   
_than someone just hard to forget_

\- HAIM, "Kept Me Crying"

* * *

  
  
  


Roman goes back to therapy after the fourth panic attack, can't even get through his first day back at the office without breaking down like some middle state dweller who ran out of methadone. 

It’s midday when it happens. He’s just gotten out of two meetings that were a complete waste of time, nothing but boring circle jerks spearheaded by the acting head legal counsel (who is nowhere as hot as Gerri, nor remotely as good at her job). He’s debating whether to slither into Gerri’s office and complain about it while she makes calls, goad her into insulting him, when one of the idiot maintenance guys drops the dolly that they’ve carting down the hall and Roman promptly forgets how to breathe. He hides in his bathroom and doubles over, despite that he wasn’t fucking shot, isn’t some PTSD Vietnam headcase who lost his frontal lobe to agent orange and now hits the deck whenever there’s a loud noise. He’s Wambsgans idiot dog, just pissing all over the floor. 

He doesn’t cut out on workdays anymore, hasn’t since management training really. So he goes into his next meeting and takes his seat next to Gerri. Tries to steady his trembling hands when he reaches for his water glass. 

He usually talks a lot in meetings, confuses people with his constant stream of bullshit, gets them talking and aggravated and then steps aside while Gerri stabs them in the ribs in ten words or less. He doesn’t trust what will come out of his mouth if he opens it now, and not in his usual stream of consciousness way. More like he thinks it might be a scream or make some weird mewling sound, like that kitten he found once but that his dad wouldn’t let him keep because Logan thinks all cats are pointless sacks of fur.

“Are you alright?” Gerri leans in and whispers, when a heated discussion has broken out across the table. Roman doesn’t have to be in his right mind to know that the options they’re throwing around will never work, but he can’t get it together enough to say so.

“Yeah,” he says. Gives her a shaky nod. 

He might tell her the truth if they were alone, no crowd of employees to witness another one of the Roy family cracking up, but even then, maybe not. She’s been weird since he got back to work. Like, real fucking distant and squirrelly but in ways that are hard to pin down because she doesn’t keep him out of the loop on anything, still talks to him like he’s a human and not some lowly employee she needs to scrape off her shoe before she can glide on through the rest of her day.

She stares at him now like she knows he’s full of shit, so he banks on the cover afforded by the people around them. Turns away from her and squints at acting legal counsel the way Gerri does when someone is saying something completely inane and they’re not important enough to get her poker face. 

He gets home that night and the first call he makes is his therapist. Not the last therapist, the guy whose office smelled like toasted bread and only ever asked, “and how did that make you feel?” But the one maybe three therapists ago who was sarcastic and didn’t take his bullshit. The one who’d say things like, “If you want to waste your time, there are better ways of doing it than paying me eight hundred dollars an hour.” As if that’s a lot of money for him or something. 

He stopped going to her when they started talking about his childhood and all the weird shit that normos would probably call abuse. But he never told her off or sued her the way he did the other therapists he broke up with, just stopped showing up to appointments and blocked her office number. A bad drunken lay he didn’t want to think about ever again. 

It’s a few sessions before they even talk about him getting his skull cracked open. They talk about his father, work, Kendall, and one time Gerri, but she doesn’t bring up him going viral for getting the shit kicked out of him, and after two weeks he thinks maybe she’s just as useless as the rest of them. She’s smart and steely but not in a way that makes his dick twitch, and he’s starting to think that’s the only way anyone can ever get through to him. A limp little emotional conduit tucked between his legs. 

But then one day he jokes, “and that was before I went all hero and saved Gerri.” Just a stupid throw away comment he expects her to breeze over the way she usually does his pointless bullshit. 

She looks at him hard for a few beats. Tilts her head and says, “do you feel like a hero?”

“Well yeah,” he shrugs and his voice cracks. “Clearly I’m fucking Superman, right?”

He starts crying and can’t stop. Just tears and snot and the silence of his therapist as she waits, hands him a box of tissues. 

. . . 

“That’s stupid and you knew that before you even started mouthbreathing into my ear,” Roman says into his phone as he gets in the car, slides in next to Gerri. “Why are you wasting my time on this?” 

He hasn’t ridden in the same car as her in months. Not after Waystar’s insurers made grumbling noises about the liability and Waystar’s security agreed. But then things settled down, another conglomerate became the new lightning rod for public rage, and they got a memo this week about the policy being rescinded. 

“Don’t make them piddle themselves,” Gerri says, when he gets off the phone. “That’s my job.” 

“Sorry,” he says, though he’s not. He tries to keep the really stupid shit off her desk entirely, no less so as they’re hovering in the moment before the new CEO is named. They thought the Board was leaning one way, three months ago, but it turned out the guy had a history of gropey-mcgropey Biden hands, and Roman pointed out that maybe they could stop picking predators, if only for the optics.

He takes a pill bottle out of his pocket because he doesn’t want to risk a panic attack when he gets out of the car. Car rides themselves are fine, they’re good and relaxing even, but sometimes getting out of a car in a noisy place makes him go all shitshow crazy town. 

Gerri arches an eyebrow at the pill bottle, probably worried he’s going all Kendall or something. Which is fair, maybe, but even his brother has been sober for months and Gerri must know that Roman’s been pretty fucked in the head, if better lately.

“For panic attacks,” he says, and shakes the pill bottle like a baby rattle. “Don’t want to have to duck into a bathroom and breathe into a paper bag. Though given her soggy milquetoast fucking family, Nan probably finds that kind of thing endearing.” 

“Do they help?” she asks. Puts away her phone here and gives him her full attention. Considers him in that way that makes him feel like he’s being dissected, like he’s the fucking Mona Lisa hanging in the Louvre, like maybe she doesn’t think that he’s just some wackjob headcase who thinks that love means taking a beating and not complaining about it. 

“Mostly,” he says. “Therapist helps more.” 

It isn’t often she tips her hand, let’s people see when she’s surprised, but she does here and he wonders if it’s all an act. Surely she didn’t think he just pulled it together with willpower and his famous sticktoitiveness.

“You met her,” he points out. “Kind of. Few weeks back. I was getting in the car with her and you were coming back in the building, talking to Frank.” 

He didn’t introduce them, obviously. Wasn’t all, _‘hey this is Gerri, who used to make me orgasm with only the sound of her pulsating disappointment. Gerri, this is the woman I pay money to so I can cry on her couch while she throws around phrases like family of origin.’_

Fuck no. Of course not. 

But they at least saw each other when Roman got in the car, off to go work on his panic attacks with some super fun aversion therapy and a Pez dispenser full of Klonopin. 

“That woman is your therapist?” Gerri asks. Makes a big show of digging around in her bag for something, though Roman isn’t really buying it because he saw the look that flashed on Gerri’s face out on the sidewalk that day.

“Did you think she was my fuckbuddy?” Roman asks, making it sound ridiculous. “That there’s some 1-900 number for milfs with resting bitch face and piles of pashmina-cape-jacket thingamajigs, and I just called it up, ordered one from the catalog?” 

“Who knows what you get up to,” Gerri says, sounding bored now. Her face is blank, expressionless, and Roman knows now that she’s full of shit. She’s just, like, completely full of shit. 

“Well certainly not you,” Roman goads her. “Since the oppo research you had done last year was fucking worthless. Didn’t even track down half my sexual deviances and future litigation liabilities.” 

“I had other ways of zeroing in on your sexual deviances,” Gerri replies. Looks at him over her glasses with a half smirk that makes his whole spine fucking tingle. 

Because they don’t do this or even acknowledge this anymore, not since he left the hospital. He doesn’t call her late at night and she doesn’t text him about anything but work and bullshit life stuff. 

He still trusts her not to screw him over, knows deep down into his bones that his back will never end up with her screwdriver in it. And they still talk about real shit; the idiot her daughter’s dating right now, whether Wambsgans is ever going to grow a pair and file for divorce from Shiv, how the next CEO will probably have it out for Gerri even though hers was always a borrowed crown. But she doesn’t make jokes about his shriveled dick while he pants like a dog that’s been left out on a hot day, and he tries really hard to look at her now and only see a friend - see the stone cold killer bitch he fucking respects, not someone he once asked to marry him when he was streaming nonsense and only three-quarters kidding. 

“That you did,” Roman nods. Because what else is he supposed to fucking say. 

The meeting with Nan Pierce is only a cover for a meeting with one of Nan’s friends, a Board member of a company that used to produce film and cameras until it went bankrupt, reorganized to become a manufacturing company. Roman thinks they only want Gerri, that they don’t want to touch a member of the Roy family with a ten foot dick, so Gerri meets alone with four members of their Board while Roman tries to make awkward small talk with Nan fucking Pierce. 

“I didn’t think anyone in your family knew the word loyalty,” Nan says, while they sip the world’s most bitter tasting coffee. Like, just fucking foul. 

“I don’t know about that,” he says, because he knows that was probably a pot shot for everything that happened before. Maybe a joke at his expense for being willing to leave his family’s company, follow Gerri around like a puppy dog. “But I do know that I’m not drinking this shitty coffee.” 

She seems offended by the language but honestly, fuck her. This deal has nothing to do with her and even if it did, he has standards. He goes down the hall and, in his least dickish voice, asks for more coffee, maybe fresh this time, and an assistant or someone scurries back in, two coffee cups clutched in the guy’s freakishly small hands.

“Better,” Nan says, after sipping it. 

No shit.

“Maybe my father didn’t teach me about loyalty,” Roman shrugs. Or about love. Patience. Baseline fucking human kindness. “But I did learn to recognize the taste of stale two-bit bullshit. And Gerri is the farthest thing from it.” 

He guesses Nan approves of this because she starts waxing philosophical here. Boring ass crap he does better at feigning interest in now, even though he’s just thinking about Gerri and the way she looked at him in the car. 

Gerri calls him into the room later, and his whole job is to act like a normo. Talk about his vision and what he and Gerri can bring to the table as a team. 

“You don’t think it’s a conflict of interest, given Gerri’s history with your family?” someone asks Roman, and he blinks at them for a moment. Runs the invective he thinks here through a couple of filters and maybe a universal translator. 

“Do I think it’s a conflict that we present a unified management team built on loyalty, communication, and - as Gerri has laid out - results? No.” Roman sits back in his chair. “I do not. Especially as most companies lose a lot of time to bullshit posturing between the inhabitants of the C-suite.” 

Look, if they're going to regard him as some beta bitch to Gerri’s alpha, that’s fine. He can work with that. Their last CEO left with a less than stellar record despite a promising agenda, and it’s an open secret that there were manbaby catfights between the CEO, COO, and CIO. So where has that gotten them, exactly, besides their stock being right back in the shitter? 

It doesn’t feel like slam dunk when they leave the room, but he’s starting to recognize that he’s just better at spotting hesitation than he was two years ago, walking around spouting from his jock, people coming behind him to clean up his messes and report glowing horseshit back to his father. 

He wants to ask Gerri what she thinks, but he won’t, not until they’re back in the car. She’s reading something on her cell phone now, following him down the hallway and around the corner, but that was clearly a mistake because all he does is get them lost. A metaphor, if ever one’s bitten him in the ass. 

“Okay,” she breathes out, clearly annoyed that they’re standing in the middle of some construction site in their expensive shoes. “So this is clearly not the elevator lobby.” 

“You’re a genius,” Roman tosses out. “Anyone ever tell you that?” There are ladders everywhere and he ducks under one. A little jungle gym fun to break up the tension of the day.

“All the time,” Gerri drawls, “and get out from under there, before someone sees you.” 

He ducks under one more, just for shits and giggles, but she’s right, he doesn’t want someone to see him acting like the lunatic he is, so he squeezes under it, his head bowed low, and then tries to duck back out, his head slamming into something hard on the way up. 

He hears Gerri shout his name as he goes down, but then there’s just blinding pain and fireworks going off behind his eyes, the kind he gets when he chokes himself a little right before he comes.

“Goddamnit,” Gerri says, and then she’s calling for someone while he lies there, groaning like an idiot. 

“I think I’m okay,” he manages, after a while. But there are more people now, a din of voices, and he can feel someone beside him, holding his hand. 

“Don’t move,” Gerri says. Which is funny inside his head, because of course he’s not going to move. He feels like a brain floating in vat right now. A fucking Cartesian riddle just lying here on the floor, probably bleeding out. 

At some point he’s able to open his eyes and he sees paramedics, and he’s worried about the spectacle of it all. How he probably just blew their deal up by being an idiot who swung around a construction site like some methed out monkey. 

“Be still,” Gerri says, when he tries to apologize. But her voice sounds rough, low. Probably panicked by the blood that he’s no doubt leaking all over her shoes. 

He hears her arguing with someone. Hears her sound cold and cutting as he’s loaded into an ambulance. But then she’s beside him, holding his hand again, and he really hopes this isn’t how he dies, Gerri upset with him because he never stopped being a clown stuffed into a suit. 

He loses track of time a little, between all the tests they run at the hospital. Maybe he falls asleep, maybe he’s conscious but fruit loopy. All he remembers is that he’s conscious when a doctor comes into the hospital room he’s laid out in. 

He thinks it’s the same one who operated on him last time, but he can’t be sure. They all the look the same. 

“Looks like you got off lucky this time,” she says. “No fracture. Mild concussion. Hit an entirely different spot of your cranium, which is pretty fortunate.” Because he has permanent fucking soft spot on his head from last time. A giant baby, walking around in the world with a part of his head ready to crack open like an egg. 

“Do you need to keep him for observation?” Gerri asks, and Roman wonders how long they’ve already been here. Hours, he thinks. 

“A little while longer,” the doctor says. “Run a few more scans, just to be on the safe side.” 

The conversation goes on without him, Roman just lying there like fucking Hellen Keller because his head really hurts and he thinks maybe, when it hurts less, he’ll think about having a panic attack. 

But then the doctor leaves and there’s just the beeping of a monitor and the sound of Gerri breathing, and then that last sound changes, speeds up and is like, muffled or something. 

When Gerri holds his hand again, her fingers are wet. 

“They probably have something lying around to treat hot flashes,” he murmurs, and is truly trying to be thoughtful here. It’s freezing in this room, so if she’s sweating it’s definitely her, and he _knows_ she gets hot flashes. He’s stupid, but not so stupid as to think she randomly strips off her blazers in the middle of winter because she’s decided to show off her old lady guns. 

“Fuck you,” she says. But it sounds weird. All garbled and shaky. So maybe that doctor really did buy her way through med school and he has a subdural hematoma that she missed, his siblings about to get a tiny bit richer by way of suing the shit out of this hospital. Which doesn’t seem right, really, because if anyone is inconvenienced by him dying from malpractice, it’s Gerri. She should really be the one who gets to sue this hospital for fucking up her work flow. 

Is there a form he can fill out that says that? He should ask Gerri if there is. She would totally know. 

“Fuck you,” she says again. Or maybe the subdural hematoma is putting his brain on loop. “You do not get to scare me this many times in one year, you selfish little prick.” 

“I’m fine,” he says. “You heard the lady.” She’ll be mad that he said that later, when he’s dead from a brain bleed. But it’s not like she can yell at him for lying once he’s dead, can’t crawl into his casket in order to castigate him. 

Not that that sounds like a horrible afterlife. Certainly better than he deserves. 

“Shut up,” she says. “You do not get to speak right now.” 

Now that seems kind of harsh, especially as he’s lying here dying, but then shit gets weirder because it sounds like she’s crying, and he knows Gerri doesn’t cry. He was in a meeting once where she got a message that one of her daughters had been in a car accident - had broken three bones and cracked two ribs. No one knew until later because she just sat there, blinking down at the pink message paper until she pushed it aside and went right back to whatever circus Logan was running at the time. 

“Are you… are you alright?” Roman asks her. Even if this is his brain’s death rattle firing off random synapses, it feels rude to flat out ignore a figment of his imagination having an emotional breakdown right in front of him. 

“No,” she grounds out. Squeezes his hand so hard it hurts. “I am not fucking alright and I can’t even yell at you right now because you’re fucking concussed. _Again._ ” 

“In my defense,” he frowns, opens his eyes even though the light feels too bright and he can barely see death-dream-Gerri’s face, “that last time wasn’t really my fault.” 

“Obviously not,” she berates him. “You got that thick skull of yours kicked in trying to protect me! Which, by the way, thank you but no fucking thank you. If I have to choose between dying and watching you get beaten to death, I choose the former. So _fuck off_ next time.” 

“That’s - that’s unfair, first of all,” he argues. He can see her face now, her cheeks shot through with red like when she’s four martinis in. Her eyes are wet, which is a bizarre picture. A fucking _Persistence of Memory_ version of real life, except that she also looks pissed. All this time, and she’s still angry and disappointed in him. “And it’s not like I made a conscious choice to fuck with you.” 

“You’ve never made a conscious choice in your whole useless life,” she whispers. “You just bounce from fixation to fixation, like some Freudian wet dream looking for a love object.” 

“That's rich, coming from Queen Jocasta,” he snorts. He’s done enough therapy now to know that he’s not only one in this room who’s a wee bit fucked up. 

“And here I didn’t think you learned anything in school, other than how to ejaculate into dirty socks and blow up condoms with rice pudding inside them.” 

“That prank was fucking funny!”

“Of course it was funny,” she hisses. “The headmaster of that school was a pencil pushing fascist. I wanted to laugh the whole time I was in that needle dick’s office.” 

It hurts when he laughs, the chuckle turning into a groan, but Gerri doesn’t let go of his hand, not even when she calls for a nurse to give him more meds. 

“Do you want me to call Kendall?” Gerri asks him, when he’s about to be discharged. 

“I don’t want to scare him,” Roman says. Almost shakes his head, then remembers that doing so is a superbly bad idea. “I’ll tell him at dinner this weekend or something, I don’t know.” 

“Tell him you beamed yourself in the head by way of acting like you picked up the drug habit he dropped,” she says, looking over the discharge papers before he signs them. 

It’s not like last time, he can actually see now, though it still hurts to squint. Gerri points one manicured nail to each line he has to sign, then fills out the rest for him. 

“Thank you,” he says. Because he’s trying to get better at that. Thanking people sincerely. Apologizing, too. He just talked to Tabitha last week for the first time in a while, and he thinks he might be able to manage a friendship with her, eventually. 

“You’re welcome,” she sighs. Sounds much put upon even as she guides him with a hand to his back.

He doesn’t think about the problem that he can't go home alone, not until they’re pulling up to Gerri’s building and she’s motioning for him to get out of the car.

“I had some clothes and toiletries dropped off,” she tells him in the elevator. Sounds less pissed off now and more resigned. Likely annoyed that she has to babysit him overnight. 

“Did they say I can drink?” Roman asks once they’re inside her living room. There was a long list of do’s and don’t's but he wasn’t listening, not when Gerri was there to hear it all. 

“No booze,” she says. “No caffeine for a few days either.” He remembers that bullshit rule now, pulling a face as she kicks off her heels in front of the bar, pours herself something from a decanter. Scotch, knowing her.

It totally figures that his reward for not dying would be having to live like some weirdo fucking Mormon. 

“You’re not being very supportive of my forced sobriety,” he whines. Collapses onto the couch. 

“I’ll be plenty supportive later,” she sighs, slumping against the bar like she’s too tired to hold herself up, “when I have to wake up every two hours to make sure you don’t die in your sleep.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, turning his body toward her. Grimaces at the effort. “I’m sorry if I fucked up our ticket off the Waystar Royco satanic merry-go-round.”

“I don’t think you did,” Gerri says. “They’ll probably call next week with an offer. But let’s leave that for when you aren’t temporarily brain damaged.”

Roman’s been in her place before, has ejaculated a time or two here, but he’s never stayed over and he doesn’t know which room is the guest room. 

“Third door on the right,” Gerri says, when he says he thinks he’ll go to bed. It isn’t until he’s in there that he realizes it’s her room, not the guest room, and he doesn’t know how to make heads or tails of that. 

He probably just heard her wrong. 

He goes back out into the hall and tries other doors until he finds the guest rooms, but only one has a made bed up, so he settles on that one.

“You must be really working at a deficit if you can’t follow simple directions,” Gerri says, when she comes in to find him pulling off his shoes. “Wrong room.”

She shepherds him back across the hall to her own room, pointing toward a pile of stuff waiting for him on one of the nightstands.

“I think my concussion makes for dubious consent at best,” he prods her. Knows better than to think she’ll give anything away in response.

“I don’t plan on losing any more sleep than necessary on your feckless ass.” She takes off her earrings and throws them in an ornate box, Roman watching her movements, a clean undershirt balled up in his hands. “And I’d shut up if I were you, before I decide to smother you with a pillow in your sleep.”

She’d manage to get away with it, too. Sneaky bitch.

He lets her use the bathroom first. Watches as she comes back out with a bare face, her hair pinned up. He kisses her cheek on his way into the empty bathroom. The only boundary he plans to test tonight. 

He sees her face reflected in the bathroom mirror, her expression soft with something as he turns away, closing the door. 

. . .


	4. Chapter 4

* * *

_I kicked the habit  
_ _shed my skin  
this is the new stuff  
I go dancing in (we can go dancing in)  
_

\- Peter Gabriel, "Sledgehammer"

* * *

Roman wakes up confused, the first time Gerri prods him to open his eyes.

Well, she doesn’t really _prod_ , so much as push his hair back from his face and call his name over and over until he blinks into semi-consciousness. 

“Do you know who I am?” she asks him, her bedside lamp casting yellow light that he has to raise his hand against. 

“Sure I do, Lady Macbeth.” He kind of it mumbles it because he’s sleepy and annoyed to be woken up, and also the whole bed smells like Gerri and he never, ever wants to leave it. 

She mutters something and turns out the light after that. But Roman can’t sleep now, not with Gerri lying a few inches from him, her foot resting against his calf. Apparently he moved over, into her space while he was out. A greedy pig, even in his sleep.

“I’m already awake,” he says, when her alarm goes off next. “Still not dead. Go back to sleep.” 

He’s been thinking for the last two hours, mostly worrying.

He never used to fucking worry, just outran shit and never looked back. He knows that’s not any better but this still feels worse, feels like he’s carrying around some giant weight on his chest. Atlas having a cardiac event or some shit. 

“You should rest,” she says, and he feels her roll over, closer to him. 

She never turned her back lamp on and he wishes now that he’d waited to speak until she did. He wants to see her face, watch her stare at him. 

“I’m fine,” he yawns, “just have roller coasters going around in the old noggin.” 

He deliberately sets up the joke at his expense, waits for it to land. But none comes, he’s just swallowed by the silence until he freezes, Gerri’s fingers pushing into his hair. 

“It’s my job to do the worrying,” she says, gentle pressure at his scalp, and he stretches out his hand, settling it on her stomach. “Roman,” she whispers. A soft warning, even as he feels her breath hitch under his hand. 

“Just this,” he promises. Doesn’t move a muscle after that, her fingers still twined in his hair, his palm moving with the rhythm of her breathing. 

The thing is, they didn’t do a lot of touching, before. Shoulders pressed together while they huddled, grazed fingers over passed documents, a celebratory hug on exactly one occasion, but that was it. And he hates that - hates that he has no memory of how her skin feels, the texture of her hair gliding through his fingers. 

He thinks she’s waiting for him to say something, but he doesn’t have anything. He’s a black hole of want and anxiety and regret, and he doesn’t have any words for that, isn’t asking for anything except what she’s already letting him have. 

He wakes up later to Gerri’s hip tucked against his, his arm over her waist. It’s still dark out, but he thinks it’s morning and any minute the alarm will go off, and then this will all come to an end. 

“You never sleep, do you?” Her voice sounds muffled and close to his ear, like she’s face down on the edge of his pillow. 

“Sorry I woke you,” he says, though he’s not sure how he did, he hasn’t moved an inch. It figures she sleeps like some jackbooted sniper, always listening for the snap of a twig. 

She doesn’t say anything here, only presses into him a little more, their toes touching under the blankets. He can feel that her pajama top rode up in her sleep, and he slides his hand up a few inches to where the skin is bare, warm to his touch. 

Her breathing speeds up when he presses the pads of his fingers into her, but he doesn’t move after that, doesn’t dare break whatever fragile thing he’s cupping in his hands. Keeps as still as he can, fingers pressed into the soft skin over her ribcage, his mind for once not paying attention to the steady twitch of his own dick. 

He’s the first one to get up when her alarm goes off. Swings his legs over the edge, flicks a lamp on with the hand that isn’t rubbing his face. 

“Try to earn your keep by making some coffee,” Gerri says, and he finds it hard to believe that the fucking Star Trek looking machine sitting in her kitchen doesn’t have a timer. 

“What if I poison it?” he says, looking around for the clean clothes she acquired him. Presumably there’s a shirt and suit jacket somewhere, but all he needs now is clean underwear and a pair of pants to save his dignity. “Can you really trust that I won’t go all murder-suicide on you? I mean, can anyone trust anyone?” 

“I think I’m reasonably safe,” she says, and when he turns around she’s sitting up in bed, a little crease from the pillow across her cheek.

He doesn’t know what her expression means, but her eyes are so fucking blue against the silk of her nightgown and he wants to remember her like this, no matter if she kicks him to the curb tomorrow, two-day-old takeout dumped in the trash by the cleaning service. 

“Yeah,” he says, spinning around. “Yeah, probably.”

. . . 

Gerri was right and the company they were shilling their combined wares to comes through with an offer five days later. 

“That’s fucking insulting,” he says, throwing his fork down. They’re at his apartment, eating food he had brought in from Masa because Gerri’s been really into seafood since, like, ever. No doubt got someone to fry her up fish two by two, back on the fucking ark. 

“I’m actually pleased with the number they’re offering you,” Gerri says, squinting through her glasses. She said something a couple weeks ago about needing new ones and he thinks this squint isn’t her annoyed squint - she’s just squinting because she can’t fucking see. 

“No, not _mine_ ,” he says. Spills some wine on his pants in the middle of angrily gesturing with his glass. He stands up and tries to sop it it up with the napkin in his other hand. “Yours,” be barrels on, his vision trained down to the giant fucking wet spot spreading out across his crotch as he hears the scrape of her chair. “Who do they think you are, some bargain basement bitch? You know what, they can go fuck themselves with a number like that, we’ll find something else.” 

“Well I wasn’t going to just roll over and take it,” Gerri says, coming back to the table with a towel. She hands it to him, looking like fucking amused or something, not pissed as hell like she should be. “Have you forgotten how this works?”

“Still,” he waves his hand around. Gives up on the wine stain because it’s already soaked through to his boxers, a nice cold slap in the face to his dick. “You’re worth a lot more than that.”

She starts laughing here, and it smarts, no matter that he must look ridiculous with a giant wet bullseye over his crotch, a metaphysical manifestation of his innermost self. 

“You’re just an angry little lapdog, aren’t you,” she says, sliding her glasses off. “A yappy, flea ridden terrier, ready to bite anyone who gets too close to me.”

“I am a fucking Doberman,” he tells her. Throws down the towel he’s been waving around and takes a step toward her. “A vicious attack dog you left chained up outside, made to be mean and nasty.”

Her eyebrows are high on her forehead now, her mouth twitching with a smile, and he leans in, closing the distance. Presses a tiny kiss to the corner of her mouth. 

“We’ll see how much more I can wring out of them,” she says. Sounds a little out of breath. “No need to go biting anyone yet.” 

“Alright,” he agrees, her hand braced to his chest now. He doesn’t know if it’s to comfort him or so she can push him away if she needs to. “Just say the word.” 

She fiddles with his shirt here, probably buying herself time, and Roman leans away. Doesn’t want to push her farther than she’s willing to go.

The whole deal is supposed to be top secret, super covert ops, but three days after the first offer comes through, Cyd darkens his office door, a stern-ass expression on her face. 

Cyd is nominally his godmother, a family factoid he’s always found funny because if someone were to string together all the words they’ve ever exchanged, it wouldn’t reach across this room. Still, she’s on the very short list of people he avoids pissing off, even in the old days of endless, pointless parties and him blowing off whole days of meetings.

“What’s up?” he asks, getting up out of his chair. He gestures for her to come in and take a seat, but she doesn’t move from the door.

He doesn’t deal with a lot of the ATN shit, and he’s already dreading what this could be about. He has no desire to spend his afternoon wrangling some newly hired neo-Nazi, has come to understand what Gerri meant several weeks ago when she told him that she’s grown tired of triaging self-inflicted wounds. 

He just wants to do real shit, not just walk around fixing his father’s mistakes. Maybe get Gerri down to a ninety-hour work week so she has time to like, go to the fucking optometrist. 

“If you fuck her over,” Cyd says, ”there are people who will make sure your body is never found.”

Well, so much for top secret deals. Fucking Nan Pierce and her crypt keeper friends, gossiping in some dust covered tea room and jacking off to Hemingway. 

“That would be the least I’d deserve,” Roman agrees. Sits on desk and crosses his arms. “I certainly shouldn’t get the benefit of an open casket.”

Cyd doesn’t laugh, doesn’t even crack a smile. Nods once like some mob boss in a dumb period film and disappears back out into the hallway. 

What a weird, terrifying woman. 

He tells Gerri about it later that night, and she smirks into her martini. Says something about old guard loyalties and how he wouldn’t understand about Cyd.

“You don’t think I understand loyalty?” Roman asks. Cocks his head to the side and tries to take a couple breaths before he lashes out, says something he’ll regret, ends up storming out of her home.

“No, that’s not what I meant,” she says. She puts her martini down and comes to stand in front of where he’s sitting on her couch, a thick stack of contracts and quarterly statements beside him. “That’s not what I mean at all, Rome.”

He’s watched her say shitty, manipulative things to people and then walk it all back when it was no longer in her interest, but he thinks she’s playing it straight here. That maybe he’s being too sensitive or maybe, just maybe, she put her foot in her own fucking mouth, for once. 

“I will have you know that I am very well trained,” he says, her hands on his shoulders now, still standing above him. “Loyal and clever, and reliably housebroken.” 

“Be still,” she tells him. A command made in a feather light voice, Roman’s head bowed now, his forehead just grazing the underside of her breast. “Just be still,” she says, and moves one hand to the back of his neck, fingers wrapping around there, the weight of her rings pressing into his skin. 

They’ve been blurring the lines more with each day that passes. A flirty dance that never culminates in anything substantial, Roman testing the waters but still biding his time. 

Waiting for Gerri to finally make up her goddamn mind. 

Her skirt has a side zipper today, a fact he finds fortuitous. He tugs at it slowly so she has plenty of time to stop him, just the hiss of the metal teeth coming apart and the flicker of the television that’s on mute.

He thinks if he looks up at her he might break the spell, end this weird trance they’ve fallen into, so he just keeps his eyes straight while she steps out of her skirt and then her heels, his hands coming up to brace on either side of her hips. 

Her panties are silk but otherwise perfunctory, functional, and he doesn’t pull them away yet. Traces their hem with one finger, following the scalloped arc over her thigh and then back the other way. Leans forward slightly and plants a kiss at her center, her smell filling his nostrils. 

Would she have let him do this before, back when he was masturbsting in bathrooms, her insults pinning him to the door? He doesn’t think so, but he’s annoyed by the loss of it. A good thing that might never have been his, sailing right by him because he was an oblivious bastard, a blind fucking bat flying through snow and thinking it’s Florida. 

“Are you going to do any actual work done there, or is this going to be like that the rest of your life?” There’s wryness to her words but also an edge. Impatience, judging by the way she’s breathing now, the goosebumps going down her legs. 

“There’s that famous Waystar greed at work,” he says. Snaps the band of her underwear, which earns him an agitated huff. “Never happy with a slice, only ever wanting the whole fucking pie.”

It’s the most hypocritical thing he’s ever said, and before she can tell him so he pushes his tongue flat against her underwear and then grazes her with his teeth. He was never very good at this, but he’s had time to plan things out in his head, and the surprised sound she makes, the nails digging into the back of his neck, tell him it’s not an awful start.

He pulls her underwear down, amazed to find that she’s gotten a wax. It wasn’t necessary, but it’s comforting to know he isn’t the only one who’s been preparing. 

“Give my compliments to your esthetician,” he says, cupping her now. Can’t help being a cheeky asshole, even as he’s about to stick his tongue inside her.

“I’ll charge it to your company credit next time,” she snipes back, but it lacks the same effect when he’s running a thumb over the moisture collecting on his fingers.

It’s a difficult angle, he’s chosen to play a game on hard mode when he’s barely skated by on easy before, but he’s a quicker learner than he used to be, his mouth always faster than his brain. 

“Oh, Christ,” Gerri murmurs, when he keeps his tongue in the same spot that made her gasp minutes ago earlier. The same repetitive motion over and over, even after his tongue goes numb and his jaw hurts, her nails digging into his skin so hard that it stings, will undoubtedly leave marks behind. “Roman, oh fuck. Oh, shit, fuck, _fuck._ ”

Her thighs shake when she comes, a phenomenon he’s fascinated by and plans to pursue again later, but right now he’s being pulled up and off the couch by the collar of his shirt. Prodded down the hallway, her nails scraping wherever she touches him.

“You’re Zeus, marrying his own fucking sister just to keep all the power,” Gerri whispers, her breath hot on his neck as she works at the buttons on his trousers. “You’re a bent dick that couldn’t shoot straight on his own if he tried.” 

It’s tempting to have her on top of him but he knows it might hurt her knee, doesn’t want to watch her work to hide her limp for the next week because she’s too fucking stubborn to ever forgo heels. And her blouse has so many buttons, so many fucking buttons, he might lose five years of his life trying to get it off her. But then he does and he’s cupping her breasts through her bra, her chest splotched with red, a rush of blood to her skin he knows that he caused. 

“The only difference between you and your brothers is that you’re too tweaky for uppers and no self-respecting hooker would ever touch you.”

That last one earns her a little shove, but she lands with her ass squarely on the bed. She doesn’t seem to mind, if her expression is anything to go by. 

“Are you sure you never fucked my dad?” he asks, stripping off his undershirt. “Because your youngest daughter could be my twin.”

“Oh, fuck _you_.” He barks out a laugh as her bra hits him in the face. 

“It’s okay to like me,” he promises as he crawls over her. “I’m a big boy, I can take it.”

“We’ve yet to see what you can take,” she says. Stares up at him with a smirk, one hand wrapping around his dick.

. . . 

The ride to work in the morning is quiet, both of them pecking out emails on their phone and scanning messages for fires that started in the night. Apparently someone leaked one of his dad’s old emails, in which Logan repeatedly referred to a sitting Senator as a fascist cunt, and Christ on a fucking cracker, Roman would really like for this to not be how they spend their first morning after. 

He’s on the phone with Karolina before Gerri can get to it, she’s too busy making sure no one still active in the Waystar food chain is implicated. Logan’s email was to Karl, and Karl is long gone, so probably that part is fine, but who knows what else there is to bite them in the dick.

“We didn’t leak that, right?” he asks before Karolina can even say hello. In some ways it could help them, another nail in his dad's coffin, another feather in their cap that they cleaned up a cesspool full of dead bodies, the Mo’s of the company no longer merrily swimming around in their filth. But he doesn’t like surprises and he hopes no one below Karolina thought this was something they could pull on their own, spiff up their midyear cum dump review. 

“No,” Karolina says, and with such weight that he believes her. Knows she’s probably been up for hours, having weirdo IT guys crawling through email folders, looking for clues. “But I think we can spin this.” 

“Let me get in touch with Gerri,” Romans says. Acts she isn’t sitting right next to him, her legs crossed at her ankles, absentmindedly shaking the bracelets on her wrist as she scrolls though her phone and frowns. 

Apparently even the pale skin of her wrist turns him on now, his dick half hard as they weave through traffic. They had hurried bathroom sex only an hour ago, Roman managing to con his way into her shower as she tried to wash her hair, sniping at him to get out until he ended up behind her, her hands pressed against the tile. 

He shouldn’t want it again this soon, but it’s like she’s blackmagicked his dick. 

“One fine day, I won’t hear the word ‘cunt’ first in the morning,” Geri sighs. And he doesn’t know what to say to that, won’t even make a lame joke here because she just sounds so tired. So fucking tired of it all. 

“Karolina’s dealt with worse,” he reminds her. Nearly says something about how they’ll be beyond this dumpster fire soon, barely remembering that her driver has ears. 

They’ve both been handing their drivers and doormen wads of cash to stay quiet, no temptation to squeal about the trips to each others’ homes at night, but it’s one thing for people to find out that Gerri has his dick on a leash and another for their exit off satan’s highway to get blown up while they’re still on the fucking off-ramp. The last one he can’t even can even think about without his stomach heaving into his throat, the first one he thinks he’s probably, maybe okay with. 

The shit storm gets tamped down by mid evening, Karoline spins it as old news and Gerri having moved the misogynist mountain, the leak gets traced to Karl. Gerri decides against wasting their legal resources on ratface fucking Karl because somewhere Roman’s father is still walking around with all his usual rage and far fewer outlets for it, so Karl will probably end up dead, floating in a golf course water trap, in under a week. 

He’s been trying to hover in Gerri’s office less lately. There’s always so much work and the more he distracts her, the later they’ll both have to say, and it’s like he’s finally learned the concept of consequences or impulse control because most of the time, he talks himself out of strolling in and dramatically throwing himself down on her couch with some petty ass complaint about how the guy who delivers the mail smells like vinegar. But today he just really wants to see her. It’s been such a shitty fourteen hours and the feeling of sliding into her for the first time is still ripe in his mind, a shiny red apple right out of Snow fucking White, ready to poison what little willpower he has, every time he thinks about it. 

Gerri’s assistant must catch sight of him lurking around because she inclines her head. Mouths the words, “ _get her to go home,_ ” and fuck, Gerri would fire that woman in cold blood in two seconds flat if she knew, but Roman is never going to tell her. Just makes a little thumbs up sign before he skips into Gerri’s office, causally closing the door as she glares at her laptop like she wants it to explode. 

“I’m busy,” she warns him. “What do you need?” 

“You could be busy in the comfort of your own home,” he points out. “Finish reading that pile of shit with a drink in your hand and a plate of your favorite sea bass in front of you.” 

Is bass even a fish, or is it like some mutant crustacean? The texture of it freaks him out and he tries not to watch whenever she eats it, but hey, he used to ask his ex-girlfriend to play dead so he could get it up to fuck her, so glass houses. 

“I can’t,” she says, still not looking at him. Gives the tiniest shake of her head. “Not yet. I’m sorry I don’t have time for your golf pencil of a penis right now, but this needs my attention.” 

“I can go back to my own home,” he promises, deflating a little. “Keep my limp little golf pencil far away from you, if it means you’ll retire home, to the comforts of your bog and cauldron.” Not his best work, but he’s sad about the idea of not spending the night with her. Tries to straighten his slouch when she looks at him here, the light of her laptop reflected back in her glasses, her expression a blank slate.

“Go back to my bog all alone?” she repeats, sounding thoughtful, only it’s the mocking kind of thoughtfulness she shines on him after he’s handed her a shitty idea, an unpolished turd he tried to pass off as a diamond. “That’s hardly an incentivizing thought for a woman in my position.” 

“So maybe not alone,” he says, scuffing the carpet with his shoe, a wide arc made with his leg. “Maybe you have some dinner and do some work, and I get on my knees for you like the good little toad that I am.” 

“Thirty minutes,” she says and goes back to work, shoos him away with one hand. 

It’s tempting to pace his office floor for those thirty minutes, but he has his own triaging to do, still needs to respond to Shiv’s text message accusing him of ordering the leak. As if he wants to waste a whole day of work to explaining away the shitty things their dad’s said about people. 

_It was Karl,_ he texts Shiv. Doesn’t argue back or fight piss with piss. And who knows, maybe she’s sitting down to dinner with Logan at this very moment, still vying to keep her gold star from daddy, but he can’t control that. He doesn’t care, not really. 

He makes some calls to cruises that got put off when his day went sideways, then opens an accounting breakdown Gerri will probably want to talk about. It’s too long to get through before he leaves, but he can at least gloss through it for a few minutes now, get through maybe the first ten pages.

He’s on page sixty-two of some halfway interesting Benford analysis when he hears a knock, looks up to see Gerri standing in the open doorway, coat on, glasses and bag in her hands. 

“Shit, sorry,” he says, when he realizes it’s been over an hour since he talked to her. She doesn’t say anything while he hurriedly gathers all his crap up, stopping in his tracks to dash off a quick message to Karolina because she sent him something time sensitive. 

“You have everything?” she asks him, when he’s finally shuffling out the door. “Pack your blankie?”

“Mommy says I don’t need my blankie anymore,” he says, out in the hall. He sounds as petulant and juvenile as ever, a few people passing them with straight faces, eyes down, like they don’t want to be caught staring at Roman Roy behaving like a freak. 

“Will wonders never cease,” Gerri sighs, waspish and resigned. 

They're standing in the elevator, the weight of the stress crashing down on him, when she puts her hand on the cuff of his jacket and keeps it there for a few seconds. Long enough for Roman to stare at the bags under her eyes and her faded lipstick, his heart beating hard in his chest now, a war drum no longer his to command. 

He’s had worse days. 

. . . 


	5. Chapter 5

* * *

_Why hold onto all that? And I said,  
Where can I put it down?_

\- Anne Carson, "The Glass Essay"

* * *

Roman’s about to order himself an overpriced Kobe steak and a bottle of wine when he gets a text from Gerri. 

_Fuck anything up today?_

The protests in Hong Kong have started to have an extra dose of dystopian doomsday mixed into their usual shitshow, but he never left his hotel today, just made conference calls about production schedules and their plant in Shanghai, had a quick phone re-up with his therapist when he started to spin out a little. 

_Held a few feet to the fire_ , he texts back. _Got my head shrunk_. 

He’s been here for three weeks already and with the stupid fucking pandemic slowing shit down, he’s pretty sure it’s going to be another two at the very least. He tries not to be whiny about it but he hates being away, is going to scream his lungs bloody if he’s expected to eat one more plate of steamed dumpling bullshit, and he doesn’t care if that makes him a racist. 

_How lovely that it’ll match the other shriveled one now_ , Gerri responds, and he texts her back the middle finger emoji. 

It’s morning in New York, so she’ll be on her way to work. Has probably been up for hours, making calls and listening to Kodak’s lawyers, who only ever tell her shit she already knows. 

All the political handjobs she’s been giving out paid off last month, to the tune of an eight-hundred-million-plus government loan to transition Kodak into a pharmaceutical manufacturer under the Defense Production Act. She keeps telling him that it was his idea, and who knows, maybe it was - he throws so much shit against the wall, something was bound to finally stick. But it was Gerri who got it done, all those dinners in DC, a few fat contributions to some super PAC’s and dark money slush funds. She cut a pretty fat stock option deal for herself too, right before it went public and Kodak’s price doubled nine times over. They even had to halt trading six separate times, which is just batshit insane. 

He popped a bottle of champagne right there in her office the afternoon it was announced, didn’t care when it spilled all over the carpet, giggling as she scolded him for being “a wasteful, hedonistic slug.” Now he just has to trudge through a couple more weeks of exile and then he can go home, back to the company they’ve built back up, block by fucking block. Lead a team of people they handpicked themselves, no one to appease besides the Board, who will now quietly suck Gerri’s dick for all eternity.

_I miss you,_ he tells her as he orders his dinner. Doesn’t even put the expense on the company account because Gerri’s all about setting an example, is talking more and more about their corporate culture, a phrase he’s always thought of as a meaningless fiction, like Hogwarts, or the trinity, or tax evasion. 

_Chin up_ , she responds. Probably the most he’s ever going to get over text. 

Everyone at the company knows they’re close, affectionate even, but they think he’s some weirdo surrogate son to her, a damaged manchild she took in after he was raised by billionaire wolves, the Jungle Book gone corporate. He thinks she’s home free for a long time given what she’s just pulled off, that she could leak a sex tape, publicly sacrifice a virgin, maybe give him a golden shower every morning, right there in the middle of the fucking lobby. But she’s still so careful, always watching the blind spots he never thinks to check.

There’s a knock at the door, which is obnoxious because everything is contactless. There's no need to go busting up a guy’s depressed brooding with all that noisy bullshit.

“What the flying fuck,” he drawls, opening the door to find Gerri on the other side, suitcase beside her, his room service tray in her hands. “Um, I’m sorry ma’am, but we’re not hiring waitresses right now. Maybe try the topless bar down the street?”

“Oh, fuck off,” she says, breezing in past him. “I've been in this bra for twenty-six hours and I probably caught the plague, flying here to see your smarmy face.”

They only travel on private jets, the flight staff practically given a rectal exam before they get anyway near her. But sure, okay, she risked catching the plague to see him. 

“Now there’s the ball and chain I missed,” he throws up his arms. Pulls her into his arms and kisses her once, twice, and then gropes her ass for good measure. 

“Don’t think for a second that I’m getting near your dick until I’ve slept for at least six hours,” she warns. She finds the scotch he poured himself earlier but then forgot about, tosses it back while Roman watches her throat work.

“What if I just jack it in the bathroom while you berate me? You know, old time’s sake.” 

In actuality, she showers while he orders her a salad and the only tea they have that won’t keep her awake. Then he rubs her feet. 

“I’m so glad I decided to keep you around,” she groans, his fingers digging into the spot on her foot that always cramps up. 

“I’m a one-stop pleasure shop,” he smirks. Shifts to the other foot, waiting until she’s good and relaxed to say, “so, funny story, but Shiv’s coming into town tomorrow.”

“I’m not breaking bread with your sister,” she says immediately, though her head hasn't moved from where it’s lolled back against the couch, her eyes still slipped shut. “Good luck, but leave me out of it.”

“We see Kendall all the time,” he argues, which isn’t really truly. Roman sees Kendall a lot but Gerri stays clear. The two times all three of them have been together, Kendall politely pretended like Roman doesn't devote all of his free time to getting Gerri off. 

“The thing about ex-addicts is they’re always on a apology tour, which makes them very easy to manage.” Her eyes are open now and she pointedly looks at her foot, where his fingers have stilled. 

“Non-addicts can be easy to manage,” he ventures. Digs his thumb into her heel until she moans softly. “Take me, for example.”

“But you are an addict,” she says, that lilting voice she uses when she’s about to cut him down. “If I let you, you’d live your whole life with your tongue between my legs.”

“Luck you,” he laughs. Because she’s not wrong.

“Lucky _you_ ,” she tosses back. Reaches her hand out for his.

Their first few nights together aside, Gerri isn’t a cuddler at bedtime. She likes to be held a while, but once it’s time for sleep she rolls over and away, will glare if he tries to slither his way over. He still goes to bed with her now, even though it’s barely nine o’clock and he’s not at all tired. 

She watches him warily as he slides into bed beside her. No doubt thinks he’ll still try to talk her into sex. 

It’s crossed his mind.

“Thank you for coming,” he says into his pillow. He expects her to say something cutting, like she does this for all the COO’s she’s fucking, but instead she rolls over, tucks herself against him.

“I missed you too,” she says. Doesn’t complain when he holds her tighter. 

. . .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to haunt me on Twitter @tribblekeeper , or on Tumblr @ Thiswillonlyhurtalittle


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